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Underrail: The Incline Awakens

jackofshadows

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I enjoyed the shit out of exploring Fetid Marsch and partially because it felt dangerous even for a bit overleveled powerful char the first time. Locusts are awesome precisely because only a few at best are mandatory, the rest are just there, maintaining the menacing enviroment as well as lurking sea monsters here and there. Literally dangerous enviroment (the high termal ground/geysers) also nicely adds up to that, not to mention the snake people and other stuff of course.
 

Blaine

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Grab the Codex by the pussy
You literally only have to kill one locust hive I think to get into Horticultural center. After that, barring the actual hives inside the center, you never need to fight locusts again.
Unless you want the Oddity, that is.

That's a prime example of why I stopped playing Oddity. I adamantly maintain my position that Oddity detracts more than it adds by encouraging enemy-farming, metagaming, "strategic place-visiting," sequence-breaking, and skill-maxing, all for the purpose of nabbing the most Oddities as quickly as possible.

In other words, Oddity went so far up its own ass in its attempt to be more inclined than banal old XP that it missed the mark and ended up accomplishing the opposite.

With Classic, I don't have to think about XP at all. I play the game normally, and my character levels up. To me that's far more natural than Oddity.
 

Parabalus

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You literally only have to kill one locust hive I think to get into Horticultural center. After that, barring the actual hives inside the center, you never need to fight locusts again.
Unless you want the Oddity, that is.

That's a prime example of why I stopped playing Oddity. I adamantly maintain my position that Oddity detracts more than it adds by encouraging enemy-farming, metagaming, "strategic place-visiting," sequence-breaking, and skill-maxing, all for the purpose of nabbing the most Oddities as quickly as possible.

In other words, Oddity went so far up its own ass in its attempt to be more inclined than banal old XP that it missed the mark and ended up accomplishing the opposite.

With Classic, I don't have to think about XP at all. I play the game normally, and my character levels up. To me that's far more natural than Oddity.

Oddity is great for one run, because the system is novel and different.

After that, skip.

Kinda like locusts tbh.
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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Being a dane makes parts of Expedition unintentionally hilarious. For example, "Krigsfar" is quite literally "War dad" (“Krig” = war, “far = “dad” and the ‘s’ is used to bind the words into one, where English would just use a space) and Leif's last name, "Bøtten", means "The bucket" or "The tub". Other words were twisted by Styg or have no meaning whatsoever (unless I'm missing some Norwegian), but these and more are spelled identically to current Danish
 
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Blaine

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Grunker We'll see if you change your mind about Oddity after your Nth playthrough.

Oddity apologists routinely downvote my criticisms of Oddity, then proceed to discuss (or have a history of discussing) metagaming the Oddity system in all the ways I just described.

If you like metagaming Oddity, that's fine. Just don't delude yourselves that that, like, totally isn't what you're doing.
 

jackofshadows

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If your build is wonky/not strong in general, then sure you'll metagame, at least to a degree. Same as you'll metagame with classic like go to Foundry and unlock every damn closed door there for example. But if you play a powerful build - why would you do that? Just play the fucking game with Oddity "normally", as you said yourself, Blaine. You don't really HAVE TO farm hoppers or whatever else.
 

Sykar

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Oddity > classic, big time. As to metagaming, who is not metagaming? Sorry to burst your bubble but classic xp is far more likely to lead people into metagaming via murder hoboing everyhing in sight to squeeze out every last drop of xp from the game whereas with oddity one simply does not give a damn after you got the at most handful of oddities and a lot of critter oddities you can gather from the arena anyway. As to me, the only metagaming I do with oddity after Depot A is to visit Core City, Rail Crossing and Foundry and grab those free oddities and accept all the quests I want to do. Then again, classic XP usually ends up being 2-3 levels ahead of oddity after Depot A so it is only fair that there is a way to catch up.
Also there is enough oddity that you can miss a few and still reach max level before the end.

Being a dane makes parts of Expedition unintentionally hilarious. For example, "Krigsfar" is quite literally "War dad" and Leif's last name, "Bøtten", means "The bucket" or "The tub". Other words were twisted by Styg or have no meaning whatsoever (unless I'm missing some Norwegian), but these and more are spelled identically to current Danish

Krigsfar means the same in Swedish, war father.
 

Trashos

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With Classic, I don't have to think about XP at all. I play the game normally, and my character levels up. To me that's far more natural than Oddity.

On Classic you don't have to think about leveling, because the system is fundamentally broken (not just in UR), and you are constantly overleveled. Which is one of the reasons why Oddity exists (plus, Oddity is the way the game is meant to be played).

Metagaming is an intrinsic part of video games. It is not a side effect, it is part of the essence. Anyway, if the developer wants you to fight locusts, he will make you fight locusts. And like I have said before, locusts are not too much of a big deal if you go prepared with a good plan.
 

Trashos

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Generally, I find stalkers, spiders, burrowers, and creepers-in-cave-environment much harder (and more annoying) to deal with than locusts. I think I would say that crabs are more annoying too, so locusts are not even top 5.
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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then proceed to discuss (or have a history of discussing) metagaming the Oddity system in all the ways I just described.

I believe I am going to end the game less than max level, so that should tell you something about the amounts of metagaming the system I did :)

EDIT: really this feels like a game you could utterly ruin yourself by turning into a metagame checklist. I'm pretty sure I will have missed a shitton of content of my run (I've had to look up exactly two issues with quests I thought might be bugs - and both times I discovered entire parts of the game I had missed lol), and if I looked everything up before proceeding I can easily imagine this become a game with the game on one screen and 9 reddit/forums/wiki tabs open on the other, and that point you're going through the completion checklist instead of enjoying the game.

Though after suffering through the native attacks and finally finding out how to avoid them (which I discovered by talking to Yahota after killing some natives), I don't necessarily blame people who do this at certain points... at least that is an instance of design I really, really dislike (not so much the fact that the attacks themselves are relentless, but that the method to "solve it" it is so out of whack with everything else in the game. It pulled me out of the experience and actually doing the act didn't feel genocidal or emotionally impactful, it felt video game silly. Everything is fantastically communicated - the draining of camp resources, how close you are to solving the issue, hints for what you need to do. But the lack of options for dealing with it contrasted heavily with the rest of the design and moreover, the option (at least if that's the only one - felt like that to me) itself was, like I said, very video gamey.

Mostly, though, I never really felt frustrated by subpar quest outcomes or from accidentally discovering I missed something.

EDIT2: Solution to making the camp survive, I mean. I realize there are many ways to complete the expansion such as joining different factions etc.
 
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ItsChon

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Though after suffering through the native attacks and finally finding out how to avoid them (which I discovered by talking to Yahota after killing some natives), I don't necessarily blame people who do this at certain points... at least that is an instance of design I really, really dislike (not so much the fact that the attacks themselves are relentless, but that the method to "solve it" it is so out of whack with everything else in the game. It pulled me out of the experience and actually doing the act didn't feel genocidal or emotionally impactful, it felt video game silly. Everything is fantastically communicated - the draining of camp resources, how close you are to solving the issue, hints for what you need to do. But the lack of options for dealing with it contrasted heavily with the rest of the design and moreover, the option (at least if that's the only one - felt like that to me) itself was, like I said, very video gamey.
Yeah I do wish that mechanic was a little better executed, but there is another way of stopping the natives that makes more sense and feels more earned. You just happened to miss it.
 

Trashos

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Grunker, do you mean that having to attack the natives in order to stop the attacks felt "video game silly"? It is not silly at all, it, it is very real life. And you have a few other options as well (one of which is the obvious, defending the attacks!).

Nothing fundamental there - you could say the same about Oddity if all XP rewards were multiplied by two.

I should clarify that it is "fundamental" to open world games with respawning enemies. I clarify this all the time, and sometimes I just omit it (but you are right, I shouldn't have omitted it). You cannot stop the player from being overleveled in such games when using Classic XP with any reasonable solution.
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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Though after suffering through the native attacks and finally finding out how to avoid them (which I discovered by talking to Yahota after killing some natives), I don't necessarily blame people who do this at certain points... at least that is an instance of design I really, really dislike (not so much the fact that the attacks themselves are relentless, but that the method to "solve it" it is so out of whack with everything else in the game. It pulled me out of the experience and actually doing the act didn't feel genocidal or emotionally impactful, it felt video game silly. Everything is fantastically communicated - the draining of camp resources, how close you are to solving the issue, hints for what you need to do. But the lack of options for dealing with it contrasted heavily with the rest of the design and moreover, the option (at least if that's the only one - felt like that to me) itself was, like I said, very video gamey.
Yeah I do wish that mechanic was a little better executed, but there is another way of stopping the natives that makes more sense and feels more earned. You just happened to miss it.

Good to hear, then I don't really have any complaints tbh. I don't mind what I did being an option, I was just fairly sure it was the only one. I do mind how that option was executed in practice, however.

It is not silly at all, it, it is very real life.

Right. History is filled with stories about how 1 single person wiped out an entire tribe of souped up insane native warriors wielding shadow magic. If Styg wanted a genocide path, and I can understand why, it fits the theme perfectly, he should have given the player the option to gather weapons, persuade the chief or similarly convince them of a united attack on the native to end them once and for all. Instead of you going there on a random hunch and 1v6000ing them. It also highlights how the game is divided into screens, because if I did what I did in reality, I'm pretty sure they would withdraw to defensive positions and not run into me on a screen base to allow me to kill them small group by small group.

(We can debate the realism of one person doing that all day, the actual execution of it felt very video gamey, going there and ninjadancing your way through hordes of natives. It's further highlighted by the fact that I'm pretty sure you don't have to kill the women - but avoiding doing so isn't a matter of walking past them, it's a matter of dealing with the tedium of pressing end turn and entering-exiting combat constantly after you've killed the warriors.)
 

Trashos

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Oh, I thought you had trouble with the morality of it. OK then, but it will become apparent eventually that... this is by design. The PC *is* a badass hero character by design, and you 'd better get used to it.
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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Oh, I thought you had trouble with the morality of it. OK then, but it will become apparent eventually that... this is by design. The PC *is* a badass hero character by design, and you 'd better get used to it.

No she's not, she's a stinking cave dwellin' pipeworker and often gets referred to as such even after insane accomplishments like becoming Invictus. Which is part of what I love about the game, it almost *never* celebrates the PC as a badass except shortly after big accomplishments.

You can't even tell Briggs that you solved the native problem for good (which is kind of fucking weird tbh, you'd think he'd welcome that information). Don't you think a hero narrative would allow you to bask in that glory?
 

Parabalus

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Mar 23, 2015
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I should clarify that it is "fundamental" to open world games with respawning enemies. I clarify this all the time, and sometimes I just omit it (but you are right, I shouldn't have omitted it). You cannot stop the player from being overleveled in such games when using Classic XP with any reasonable solution.

Sure you can, UR does this already - XP for killing is scaled to enemy creature level, and the respawning enemies are (pre-DC) not really high level. Rathounds stop giving XP really fast.

Also, you don't really run into respawns often.
 

Trashos

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Grunker, there are several instances where you don't get the respect your actions deserve by NPCs. That's not even the worst occasion. But that's... how it should be. Probably. Maybe. Ahem.

I was initially disappointed myself about being a fantasy-level hero character, but it is not like we are given a choice. That's why I mentioned it, the earlier you accept it, the better.

Parabalus, they don't give XP at all after a while or they give very little? But it is not just rathounds, it is all sort of creatures and NPCs. And for all builds that can use punches effectively (incl. versatility builds), many enemies will cost from very little to no resources to kill. You can go spend your time killing hoppers with your bare hands, if there are XP there (I haven't played Classic since forever, so I may well get details like that wrong.)
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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Oh my, Abyssal Station Zero was just marvelous. A little underwhelmed with the level design of this one to be frank, but boy did it compensate with atmosphere. The first time I heard Todd breathing I nearly shit my pants :D
 
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Parabalus

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@Parabalus, they don't give XP at all after a while or they give very little? But it is not just rathounds, it is all sort of creatures and NPCs. And for all builds that can use punches effectively (incl. versatility builds), many enemies will cost from very little to no resources to kill. You can go spend your time killing hoppers with your bare hands, if there are XP there (I haven't played Classic since forever, so I may well get details like that wrong.)

But why would you do that?

Currently Classic is much less of a hassle compared to Oddity, just with normal gameplay - there's no reason to farm XP like in a MMO.
 

Trashos

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But why would you do that?

Do I need to explain grinding on the Codex? Come on.

Currently Classic is much less of a hassle compared to Oddity, just with normal gameplay - there's no reason to farm XP like in a MMO.

Call it what you will, the system you are using has already overleveled you. Of course it is less hassle, you have been given "free" levels.
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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If there was a games award category for "most characters being more than they appear" this game would surely be a favorite for first place. I luv it

In general it is quite impressive how many threads tie neatly together. Styg's storyboard must have looked like this

charlie-day-its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia.gif


He's still relying on fairly stock tools, with the McGuffin being the primary one, of course. Still, it is dilligent and effective work and shames most RPG story structures
 
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Trashos

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Who did you meet this time?
Yeah, that pic looks just about right to me, too.

Oh my, Abyssal Station Zero was just marvelous. A little underwhelmed with the level design of this one to be frank, but boy did it compensate with atmosphere. The first time I heard Todd breathing I nearly shit my pants :D

Personally, I don't think the Station needed anything/much else. I am glad they didn't put another battle in it. And I don't think it really needed another puzzle either. Yeah, the atmosphere is just awesome. It is also a good time for players to think about the expansion as a whole, for those who are into that kind of thing.

As a matter of fact, I 'd cut down the challenge in the Lemurian Health Center as well. Fewer robots, just to make the point. The place didn't need the combat challenge.
 

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